It's totally a male name.
However, a very few silly folks seem to have been using it on girls lately, along with a lot of other male names. It's a small fad. Maybe they're confused and think it's
Julianne. There's a young female competitive ice skater named
Julian Burns I have heard of.
Not that that should keep you from using it as a boy name. Personally I love it for a guy, I think it's very, very masculine; and I think it'd be very suitable as a normal male name, especially with possible friendly nickname
Jules. I think
Julian will always be primarily a male name; I really doubt you'd have to worry about it being taken over by girls.
It reminds me most of
Julian Cope, a tall-dark-eccentric-stranger-poet type (he's a somewhat lesser known pop musician who I think started out in the eighties).
I prefer
Julian Thomas, it sounds the best-balanced to me.
- chazda